


A Breakdown In Diplomatic Relations

by nayanroo



Series: Luminous Beings [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Thor (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Everyone is a bad Jedi, Gen, Padawan freakout, things never go right on missions, time jumps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-26
Updated: 2012-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-30 04:12:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nayanroo/pseuds/nayanroo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jedi Master Jane Foster and her Padawan Darcy are sent to Anobis to mediate negotiations between two resource groups, and because nothing can ever go right on a mission, something goes wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Breakdown In Diplomatic Relations

**Author's Note:**

> I know Skysprites and Aethersprites are more Clone Wars-era starfighters and I've set this a long time before that, but there's not exactly a comprehensive timeline of when ships were used, and I liked the names.

[ _Not too long ago…_ ]

Darcy tried the controls of the Delta-12, but they still didn’t respond. She clicked the comm – nothing but static. At least they had life support, but their engines were shot and even if she’d had the right parts (Darcy was pretty sure that no spare parts canister carried the ones they’d need) the one person in the cockpit who could actually replace them the right way was out of touch with the world.

She glanced back at her Master. Jane had dropped into a healing trance, but her brow glistened with sweat. That was way not normal. Nor was the way her Force presence guttered, like fire in a brazier. Jane was usually a bright and steady light, a constant anchor. It scared Darcy to see her like this.

“Well,” she said to her unconscious Master, the cockpit, and the pieces of their destroyed hyperdrive ring drifting in space around them. “This isn’t good.”

The padawan reached out and pulled the thermal blanket up a little from where it had slipped. Healing trance or not, Master Jane was in shock from her wounds. The blanket covered her blood-crusted tunic and robe, but the paleness of her face was enough to show she’d lost enough to be in a dangerous place, and they didn’t exactly have the equipment to help Jane replace the blood she’d lost here in their ship. All Darcy could do was wait and hope that someone at the Temple would be able to respond to her transmission burst before it was too late, for both of them.

*

[ _Twelve hours earlier…_ ]

“ _Jedi transport, you are clear to land in Bay Four-Besh. Proceed along transmitted route._ ”

“Copy that, base control. Proceeding along transmitted route vector.”

The pilot revved the sublight engines again and they moved onto a trajectory that would bring them in to land in the major hub on the planet Anobis. Behind him, the two Jedi that had been sent to mediate contract negotiations between the Republic and the trade bureau of the resource planet stood quietly, their hoods up. 

Pau No-Rego often contracted with the Order to pilot their transports, but he never got used to the mystery that Jedi seemed to shroud themselves in. He didn’t pretend to know more about the Jedi just because he worked with them a lot; the Order paid him well for his services, and that was enough. This time, he was just going one-way with these two, and leaving the Jedi and their ship on-planet then departing again to pick up another pair of Jedi from a nearby system for return to Coruscant. It was unusual, but not unheard-of, and he’d deposited their hyperdrive ring around the back of one of Anobis’ moons and brought them in.

“We’ll be landing in about ten minutes,” he said to the two Jedi when he felt the ship shiver in response to hitting atmosphere. “I’ll make sure your ship’s offloaded and any bits of sundry you have stowed on it, then I’ll depart again. Take an hour, all told.”

“That’ll be fine, Pilot No-Rego,” the shorter of the two said. “Thank you, it’s been a very smooth trip.” She bowed, and the taller Jedi followed suit.

Yes, he thought as he began landing procedures. Some Jedi sure were all right.

*

The ramp of the transport lowered and the two Jedi descended it, halting at the bottom to bow to the semicircle of beings that had come over as soon as the landing skids had touched the bay floor. 

“We are honored by your presence,” said Ulas Aldamar, the head of the Trade and Exports Bureau for Anobis. Beside him, Veskasa Rosario (the representative of the miners) and Torc Maral (representative for the farmers) also bowed. “Let us show you to somewhere you may wait comfortably until the negotiations begin.”

“Our transport will be offloading a Delta-12 Skysprite,” the taller Jedi said. “We would like it to remain in this bay.”

“That won’t be a problem. Please, this way,” Aldamar said.

The place he showed them to was not unlike a room in the Temple; sparsely decorated, comfortable but not luxurious. With a final bow and directions to the conference room that events would be conducted in, Aldamar and the rest of the entourage left the room.

Jane lowered her hood at last, turning in a slow circle to take in the room. “What do you think?” she asked her Padawan as the young woman lowered her own hood.

“I think I needed to sleep more on the transport here,” Darcy answered, pushing her own back and fussing with her hair. “I’ve got space-lag.”

“You know what I meant. What did you _feel_?”

Before they’d stepped out of the transport, Jane had quietly instructed her to stretch out in the Force and see what it had to say about their hosts. Her Master knew her weakness lay in clearing her mind for truly deep connections, and had apparently come to favor the sink-or-swim method of learning. But Darcy had done her best; the point of having her take on the role had been so Jane could hang back and sense things out for herself. It was better to have two things to compare, though, so…

“Aldamar,” she said at last. “I don’t think he really wants to do anything bad. He’s… in it for the money. At least that’s what I feel. His thoughts turned inward on his own benefits.”

“I agree,” Jane replied, folding her hands into her sleeves. “What about the two representatives? Sharing space on an agriworld is touchy enough—“

“—and on Anobis there’s a long history of the miners and the farmers being at each other’s throats, like a couple of womp rats fighting over scraps,” Darcy finished. “I _did_ read the brief this time, Master.” She furrowed her brow in thought a moment, remembering the way things had _felt_ to her right as she’d descended the ramp. “Something feels off about the representatives though. One of them is hiding something. But I can’t tell which.”

“Quiet your mind, next time we are with them.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You’re one of the Order’s best Masters, _everything_ comes easy to you.”

Jane smiled. “If becoming a Jedi Master were easy we wouldn’t have Padawans at all,” she replied. “Besides, there are a lot of things I’m not good at but that you are good at. You’ve got a natural head for politics, which is why I think this mission is going to be real interesting for both of us.”

“How d’you figure?”

“A good Master learns from their Padawan, too. And you’ve already taught me a lot.”

“All I’ve done is managed to get you out of the workshops more than one out of every few days, and that’s with _help_.” 

“Still.” Jane leaned back against the low rest of the chair. “Meditate on what you sensed until it’s time for negotiations to begin.” She held up a hand when Darcy started making indignant noises in protest. “It’s important. You have a lot of potential, but you need to learn to quiet your mind.”

As Darcy sighed melodramatically and went off to find a quiet place to seat herself in, as Jane sensed her Padawan fall into an unsteady calm, Jane tucked her hands deeper into her sleeves and reflected back on her own thoughts. Darcy hadn’t been wrong; someone was planning something. She just hoped that it wouldn’t be something they couldn’t handle. Aid would come, but it wouldn’t come fast enough to prevent something bad from happening.

*

Negotiations began later that day; for the most part, the Anobisians talked, with Darcy and Jane there to listen to what went on between them and the Republic representatives. They had little to do with either side, though Darcy found it fascinating.

Problems had arisen over the long centuries since Anobis’ colonization when rich highland pastures overlapped with mining claims, and when the question of importation subsidies arose. Miners weren’t able to devote much time to anything but mining if they wanted to turn a profit, and so depended more on getting their goods from the farmers and from off-planet. Farmers were much more self-sufficient and didn’t appreciate the trade ministries and the Republic government giving what they saw as handouts to the miners, particularly when the credits for it came out of their pockets too. As the Republic needed both industries, it had a vested interest in being present and working out terms. Things had been tense lately between the miners and the farmers, and the Council had pulled Jane aside before their speeder left for the platform where their transport had been waiting and told her to be mindful.

So she had done just that, and had tried to get Darcy to do the same, though truly she had no idea how. Darcy was Jane’s first Padawan and had been made so at the behest of the Council rather than being selected by Jane, and sometimes she wondered if it was because they were so different that they’d been placed together. She’d become fond of the younger woman, though, seeing in her the same eagerness to learn that possessed Jane herself, the same determination to overcome obstacles. Darcy wasn’t especially strong in the Force, but one didn’t need a high midichlorian count to be a great Jedi.

She’d been right on, too, Jane thought. There had been something _off_ the minute they’d stepped off the transport. Her eyes kept slipping back to the mining representative and she could see Darcy’s doing the same. The miners had been under pressure by the farmers and their supporting factions in the planetary government to let some of the import subsidies expire; it was up for a vote, and the strain was great.

Beyond all that, Jane could sense a growing threat, and knew by the unease in Darcy’s presence (and the tension in her body, though Jane couldn’t really fault her on that) that it wasn’t just her. Letting her eyes half-close – Darcy was taking notes, though her stylus rapped annoyingly on the edge of the datapad – Jane cast outward with the Force, trying to find a source.

*

[ _The very recent past._ ]

Darcy opened her eyes again, staring out into the blackness of space once more. She’d drawn her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them while trying to think of who she knew, her Master’s friends that were back on Coruscant or somewhere nearby in the galaxy. Apparently she’d fallen asleep.

_This is why you’ll never get to the Trials_ , she thought irritably to herself. _Can’t keep your head in the game. Come on now._

Closing her eyes, Darcy ran down her mental list again. Thor had been sent to Kashyyyk – she hadn’t been surprised to hear that he got along well with the Wookiees. Kashyyyk wasn’t exactly close, not as close as Coruscant, but it was still a Mid Rim world. A few quick hyperspace jumps and he could be here to help, but he’d need a ship that could either take their Skysprite in tow or else one able to fit two normal-sized human Jedi and himself. She was pretty sure he’d taken one of the single-seat starfighters, and scowled. If he found out Jane had been hurt and he hadn’t been taken along on the rescue he’d be grouchy.

Grouchy made her think of Loki, the pale and dark-haired Master who had made his rank not long ago. He was _supposed_ to be back on Coruscant, but nobody could ever seem to find him even then except Sif, and she was off with the Knights Flirty, Foody, and Frowny doing Force-knew-what that required four Knights. 

Panic began to rise at last. She’d be fine – the life support systems were intact, they even had some rations – but Jane needed medical attention _yesterday_ , or else all the bacta in the galaxy wouldn’t be able to help her. Darcy didn’t have the engineering skills to fix the ship (had, in fact, made dramatic overtures to glazing over whenever Jane brought it up), their hyperdrive ring was blasted to the Unknown Regions, and there was _nobody_ around to hear any distress calls except, probably, a cloaked ship waiting for rescue to come in to get them. Darcy couldn’t do anything, she was just a Padawan, just some kid the Council had wanted to give Jane so that she didn’t waste away in the workshops or the hangar bays of the Order or something. She was _useless._

_There’s always another option,_ she heard faintly, in her mind. It was something Jane said often when they were working on something and Darcy was getting frustrated with repeated failures. It was so clearly her voice that Darcy actually twisted to see if her Master had woken up, but Jane was still in her trance. 

The first time she’d heard Jane say it had been not long after Darcy had become her Padawan, when they’d been working tirelessly on something that, to her, had seemed impossible. Jane’s old Master had been sitting across the workbench from them, looking pained as he often did, as Jane cleared the board of equations and picked up the stylus to begin again. She’d said that with a bit of a snap in her voice, and then Darcy had looked at the empty cups that had once held caf sitting around the workspace and sighed. But Jane had been right; she’d found first one workaround, then another, and had presented the whole project completed to the Council when both Darcy and Master Selvig had thought it couldn’t be done. Wasn’t this just like that, except without the caf jitters?

“Okay,” Darcy said to herself, then took a deep breath and stretched out to the Force for calm when she heard how her voice shook. “Okay. Another option. Think, Darcy, think!”

_Fix the engine – I can’t, there’s no way to reach it and no parts._

_Raise someone on the comm – I can’t, there’s nobody in range._

_Get out of the system – I can’t, the hyperdrive ring is broken._

_Then get someone who can help – I can’t if I can’t comm out—_

“You don’t need a comm.,” Darcy muttered to herself. “You’re a kriffing _Jedi_. Get your act together.”

In the end she settled on Hogun – he wasn’t all that bad when you got to know him despite the fact he _hardly ever talked_ , and she already knew what his mind felt like from that mission on Ylesia. It was calm, like Jane, a still pool with currents running deep within it. Closing her eyes and taking breaths, trying hard _not_ to think about how she’d never done anything like this before, Darcy stretched her mind out to its limits, using the Force to boost her thoughts across light-years, searching for that calm spot.

It was nearly for nothing, despite that she had begun to feel sweat beading up on her forehead. The galaxy was full of things that could pull a Jedi’s focus away, little pockets of brilliant light and deepest dark that threatened to yank her off-course. Gritting her teeth ( _Your Master’s life depends on you doing this, don’t you run off like a scared pittin_ ) Darcy reached down inside for that flow of energy that she’d always been aware of but rarely been able to use, and grasped it, and just like that made the connection.

*

[ _Slightly before that_ ] 

“The miners cannot support themselves on what goods they produce alone, and the idea that imposing a tax that would be levied only against the miners is ridiculous!”

“The farmers cannot be expected to support the excesses of your people, and we certainly don’t want to have to pay for others to be lackadaisical—“

“Mining is a huge part of Anobis’ exports, we’re _hardly_ being lazy, we just can’t _grow_ anything in the mountains, we need to import special _equipment_ —“

“Then pay for it yourself, if mining’s so profitable!”

“All right, all right!” interjected one of the female Republic representatives, a female Bothan. “I think we’ve had enough for a morning. Let’s break for a meal and reconvene. Hopefully that’ll give us all time to reprioritize our thoughts.”

“I think that’s the best idea I’ve heard yet,” the miner, Veskasa, said acidly. She left, followed closely by Aldamar, while the others took a moment to collect their items.

Darcy snorted quietly, and Jane glanced over at her. “That was totally a way to get people to settle down,” her Padawan murmured. “People are calmer when they’ve eaten.”

“How do you explain Volstagg then?”

“There are always exceptions, Master.”

They laughed a little, but Darcy frowned and looked at Jane. “Did something seem strange to you?”

“Like there’s some kind of cloud hanging over us?” Jane glanced around at the people still in the room and pitched her voice low. “I’ve felt it. Danger.”

“Nothing immediate.” Darcy chewed her lip. “But close. _Really_ close.”

“What do you think?”

Darcy seemed to hesitate a moment, eyes flicking to the door the mining representative had disappeared through with Aldamar. “I think that Ves woman was _way_ too quick to agree to a break. She was in her stride with her argument. Most people would want to continue.”

“Maybe she wanted a break.”

“No, she’s not that kind of person. She’s like you – once she gets going, she doesn’t want to stop, that’s how she’s always been. But here she just stops. Why?”

They were looking at each other, brows furrowed, when Torc Maral picked up a slim nerfhide case from the floor. “Representative Rosario must have left it behind—“

The sound of two lightsabers igniting made him look up suddenly, nearly dropping the case when he saw Jane leap up onto the table and run toward him.

“Everyone get _down_!” she shouted, grabbing the case with the Force and flinging it out into the open air of the courtyard next to the open-air conference room—

It was too late, though. It didn’t blow up in Maral’s face, at least, but exploded close enough for the shock wave to knock them all backward. Darcy, looking up, saw Jane slam against the wall beside the doors and slide down, curling into a ball as metal and stone shrapnel rained down around her. “Master!” she shouted, scrambling to her feet and using her lightsaber to cut through debris flying around.

Jane coughed, pushing hair out of her face, and stood painfully with Darcy’s help. “I’m fine!” she shouted, over the din of flames and approaching sirens. “Find the representatives! Help me get them to safety – take the north side of the room, I’ll head toward the courtyard!”

She’d barely gotten up and over the ruins of the conference table before part of the ceiling collapsed and a beam slammed into her stomach. Darcy could hear the ribs cracking even over the flames and shouts and—blasterfire?

“What is it about us that makes people want to _shoot_ us so badly?” she muttered, skittering over flaming-hot debris to grab Jane around the waist. Her left side felt _mushy_. Definitely not normal, and even so Jane was trying to stand up and use the Force to push debris aside, looking for the Republic representatives and Maral.

“Can you sense them?” she asked. Darcy felt how strongly her Master was pulling on the Force to even talk, and dutifully stretched out her senses through the room, pulling back after a minute when she couldn’t sense anything and her panic was getting in the way. 

“No, Master,” she said, and felt Jane’s hand brush the back of hers reassuringly.

“Then we’d better get out of here and contact the Order,” Jane said, coughing again. Darcy didn’t like the fact that Jane’s lips seemed redder after it. “Pretty sure negotiations are over.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Darcy kept her lightsaber in her free hand and tried to avoid the corridors where blasterfire sounded the loudest as they made their way through the complex to the hangar bays. It took forever, it seemed, but when she lowered Jane into the gunner’s seat in the Skysprite and fired up the engines, she saw it hadn’t even been ten minutes.

Their astromech beeped to itself as Darcy took them out of the bay and throttled all the way forward, blasting out of the atmosphere without any regard for the landing control squawking at her over the comm.. There were other way more important things at stake, like Jane’s _life_ , and getting to the hyperdrive ring and Coruscant as quickly as possible. She relaxed a little when they were in the black, throttling back and making for the moon they’d set their ring to standby behind. 

“Arfour,” she said, and heard a confirming tweedle. “Set a hyperdrive course for Coruscant and scramble a transmission to the Order, saying negotiations have broken down and we’re not going to stick around to get shot at. _Quickly_.”

Not waiting for the droid to acknowledge her orders, Darcy reached for the controls that would activate the hyperdrive ring as they came around the side of the moon… only to rest her fingers on them, useless, when she saw that their ring was now actually a field of debris. “ _Stang_!” she shouted, and heard Jane make a noise behind her. 

“Ships,” her Master muttered, just before the laser blasts rocked the Skysprite.

*

[ _Now._ ]

“ _…read?_ ”

Darcy cracked her eyes open slowly. She’d been focusing so much on maintaining the link with Hogun she’d lost touch with what was going on around her. But suddenly her comm was beeping – and she looked up and saw the _Bifrost_ slicing through space toward her. Face splitting into a grin, Darcy let the connection slide and practically leaped for the comm, grinning as she saw the ship come around and open its bay doors. “We read you!”

“ _Darcy, is that you?_ ”

“Fandral, I have never, _ever_ been happier to hear your voice,” she replied, bringing systems back up.

“ _Should I be hurt?_ ”

“Depends.” Darcy flicked the switches for the maneuvering thrusters and looked up at the bright white interior of the _Bifrost_. She was tired from using the Force in such a big way, but the river of its power was still strongly flowing and she reached out again, letting it guide her hand as she eased the Skysprite toward the open bay. “Keep an eye out, I’m not really sure we’re the only ones coming to this party.”

“ _Yes, of course._ ” There was a pause, and then he continued in a slightly surprised voice. “ _You’re doing great_.”

“What, you think just because I’m not a Knight that I can’t handle a ship? I fly better than my _Master._ ”

“ _No, I—incoming! Hold, Darcy!_ ”

She reversed thrusters and the Skysprite stopped rising toward the belly of the transport, hanging still as one of the Aethersprites used by the Order rocketed out of it. She had time to register the pilot – Sif – before Fandral was shouting at her to get in the bay _now_ and she engaged the thrusters again, rising quicker this time and sliding smoothly into place. 

From their vantage point, just beside the open bay doors, she could watch Sif put the Aethersprite through its paces as the three ships that had been surrounding the Skysprite decloaked. Darcy was a good pilot – not stellar, but _good_ – but she wasn’t at all on Sif’s level. To be honest, Sif scared her a little bit, with how she was good at _everything_ having to do with battle and fighting – Darcy was pretty sure that Sif could take a twig and make it into a weapon somehow. She was like some kind of super Jedi commando pilot. _Freaky._

The ships had good weapons packages but Sif and the Aethersprite made an agile pair; she seemed to skim the surfaces of the ships, strafing them with laser blasts, before diving over or under one to put it between her and retaliating blasts. The ships spent more time hitting their own than hitting her.

Then she was zooming back to the _Bifrost_ , her voice crackling over the comm. “ _Coming in – let’s get the kriff out of here_!”

“ _Copy that,_ ” Fandral replied, and Sif tucked the Aethersprite neatly into the bay beside the Skysprite, settling it down on top of the closed bay doors. Darcy felt the engines of the _Bifrost_ rumble through her seat as she popped the canopy and leaped out almost before it was all the way up. Sif was doing the same, jogging the short distance between their ships.

“You’ve gotta help her,” Darcy said, the adrenaline and exhaustion catching up to her finally as she started to shake. “You’ve gotta do something, she’s stopped bleeding but she’s lost a lot of blood and she’s pale and—“

“Calm,” Sif said, putting a hand on Darcy’s shoulder. She was flushed with exhilaration, but her eyes held sharp focus. “Breathe, Darcy. We shall take it from here.”

Volstagg and Fandral came into the bay then and Volstagg lifted her master up out of the seat in his arms, gentle as could be. As they wrapped Jane in the thermal blanket, Darcy caught Hogun’s eye; he’d come in behind them, and nodded when he noticed her looking at him. There was the barest hint of a smile on his face.

That was all Darcy needed. Once she’d seen her Master stabilized in the small medical suite the ship had, she crawled into a bunk and slept the whole trip back to Coruscant.

*

“So what happened?”

Jane looked up from where she held a spanner to the underside of their damaged Skysprite. Darcy pretty much just handed her Master tools whenever they worked on ships, and that was fine with her, but Jane had been in a private meeting with the Council that morning while Darcy had been practicing her lightsaber forms (badly), and she knew it was about what had happened on Anobis.

“The miners had apparently had enough of the farmers trying to call the shots when they export just as much as the farmers do,” Jane said. “They’re frustrated. They feel they’ve done all they can legally.”

“So they went illegal.”

“That’s right.” Jane scrunched up her face as she tried to tighten down a bolt on the rebuilt engine they were putting in and couldn’t, the movement tugging too much on sore muscles. She sighed and set her arm down for a moment. “Somehow they thought it was the best course of action. And someone had to be slipping them credits or ships or something, because they were too well-armed – what the forensics are saying about that case bomb is pretty astonishing, it’s military-quality stuff – and they had ships that nobody knew about.”

“The ones that nearly shot us out of space.”

“Yeah. Luckily, the terrorist cells seem small so for now the Republic’s letting planetary security handle it, but they’re watching very closely.” Jane looked pensive. “I don’t think that danger we sensed was entirely because of the bombing.”

“I don’t think so either,” Darcy admitted. “It was way too… dark.”

They both let that thought hang in the air a moment before Jane cleared her throat, and it dissipated, back to the place where all uncomfortable thoughts go when they don’t want to be pondered.

“Hogun told me what you did,” she said with a smile. “That takes skill. The first time we did that meld you had a Master and a Knight to help you, but this time you did it on your own. Looks like all that practice is paying off.”

Darcy grinned. Jane had seemed to find her irritating at first, an assignment from the Council to babysit, but they’d really become close in the few years they’d been a team. It always felt good to get praised though, and praise from Jane meant more than from most others. “Thanks, Master.”

Jane’s smile widened a bit as she turned her attention back to the ship. “Don’t slack off in your exercises, though.”

_Well_ , Darcy thought as she handed Jane another tool, _Guess I can’t win them all._


End file.
